Indoor vs outdoor workout: which is more effective?

Jul 05, 2023

By Phil Hilton

Primrose Hill in Northwest London overlooks all the famous bits of the capital. When it’s quiet and rainy, I’ve run to the top and performed a set of push-ups with St Paul's Cathedral to the London Eye laid out before me.

Each push-up was exactly the same as a push-up performed in a gym – same muscles used, same effort needed, but the Primrose Hill push-ups meant something different. The man who did those felt like a hero, defying the elements (light rain) unafraid of the cold damp stone beneath his hands, an adventurer ready for life’s battles. All this before a cortado and a pain aux raisins.

I’ve exercised indoors and outdoors for over 40 years and what I’ve discovered is they are entirely separate ways to move your body and change your mood.

The first gym I ever visited was the size of a bathroom and housed a single clanking arrangement of weight stacks and pulleys – it smelt of leather, sweat and socks. I was in love. When I was a teenager almost no one did resistance training. This unpretty single-purpose space was a retreat for that minority who wanted to lift. Rounded, healthy workouts hadn’t been invented yet, we were there for bigger chests, biceps and shoulders.

I’ve been to tiny community gyms in Jamaica, I’ve trained in New York gyms with rooftop running tracks and floor after floor of costly equipment. All of them send you a different message about who you are or who you want to be: successful and exacting, gritty and real, old school or cutting edge. All of them make you feel ridiculous for doing anything other than moving your body.

With the music pumping and the combined energy of a room filled with people lifting, bouncing, punching and kicking, you are swept up in a collective effort to be stronger and faster. Stopping for a set of push-ups here, you do them with everyone else driving you on – feet away, another man is lifting a bar bowing under its load of 25kg plates.

By Tom Ward

Josh Silverman, head of education at Third Space, says when you need heavy, the gym is the place, “Conclusive evidence shows that in order for strength and muscle adaptation – think size and look – you need to progressively increase the load over time. An indoor club will have tonnes of weight, literally, whereas progressive overload will be difficult to pull off when training outdoors.”

A weights rack with dumbbells ranging from 2kg up to ‘not sure I could move that’ allows you to pinpoint key muscles, exhaust them to any degree you wish and watch them bulge and grow. Silverman points out, “You will specifically adapt to imposed demands. That means if you have a specific area of the body you want to target then using an exercise that complements your mechanics is going to yield optimal and faster results. This becomes extremely difficult when working with either body weight or restricted equipment. If you want that bulging chest an indoor club is the way to get there.”

But some days are outdoor days. There’s a very basic set of pull-up bars about two miles from my door, hidden in the woods. To reach them I run under a canopy of leaves provided by the trees, I slip across muddy patches, I tangle with tree roots. When I arrive, I’m calmer: the setting has worked its magic. My body and mind have had to work together just to get me here, then I’m performing my pull-ups and my leg lifts with wind and rain battling me, I’m feeling my ability to adapt, to deal with these impediments beyond my control. The sense of exercising in a world not created for my convenience is bracing and cheering.

By Tom Ward

Dealing with the unpredictability of the outdoors is physically beneficial too. Leah Maclean, founder of outdoor facility Fitness at the Farm, says, “When you have to compensate for uneven terrain you end up using your whole body rather simply than isolated muscle movements. This means you learn how to work with your whole body on all planes of motion. This means more effective workouts, and helps prevent injuries in everyday life.”

Exercising outdoors, particularly while travelling, has given me some of the most memorable moments of my life, but if I had to choose between an outdoor workout and an indoor workout, vanity would lead me to the free-weights area every time. Sure, I’m a mature, balanced, holistic-health kind of guy, but I still want to know I can work those T-shirt muscles.

However, if you’re ever in San Francisco Bay, there’s a callisthenics area in Marina Green with a view I’ll remember for the rest of my life.